In the onslaught of indie announcements at an event or convention, only a few manage to cut through the noise and leave an impression. For me, one of those indie titles is Anger Foot. Developed by Free Lives and published by Devolver Digital, Anger Foot was announced a few months ago. At Gamescom 2022, we had the chance to play a vertical slice of the experience, which consisted of 11 stages. If it's been difficult to fill the void left by Hotline Miami, Anger Foot might be the remedy.

Anger Foot isn't too different from the Hotline Miami games, but it alters a few key aspects. You complete levels by reaching the end, and you have to stay alive while being attacked by strategically placed grunts. Initially armed with spiked clubs, your opponents eventually wield firearms and grenades. A single hit with a melee weapon and two hits by a bullet will be the end of you, and you return to the beginning of the level. Essentially, this still sounds like I'm describing Hotline Miami, so what makes Anger Foot special? It's kind of in the name.

When you start off, your only innate ability is a powerful kick that destroys anything and kills anyone in its path. It's not a particular pretty or well-formed extremity, but it does the job to great effect, so you'll be kicking in a lot of doors and teeth. Unless you're armed, you want to jump foot-first into opponents while dodging incoming blows. Since Anger Foot is not an isometric affair but a first-person game, each level is unknown at the start. There's no map or isometric view to guide you, just a bunch of closed doors waiting to taste your foot.

The game has some interesting ways to leverage that, with the occasional dead end behind a door. There's a lot more potential that we could see in the final release. Since you don't know where to go and what awaits, kicking each door is a fresh surprise. You'll die from a stray bullet sooner rather than later, but that's part of the process. It's a trial-and-error game, so you'll know the layout of each stage by heart by the end. If you're easily frustrated by dying and repeating the same portions of a title, this is likely not for you. Over the span of 30 minutes, I barely managed my way through eight stages, spending most of my time with specific sections where I would die over and over again. It scratches the same itch as Hotline Miami with a severe and possibly unhealthy foot fetish thrown in, but the result can be equally infuriating and addicting.

You don't just kick your way through the game. Enemies drop firearms that you can pick up and use, but you can't reload them. Instead, you chuck it in someone's face and grab their weapon — after they've been greeted by your foot, of course. It's not entirely on rails, but there is a critical path, so many encounters feel like small combat puzzles. High scores for each stage are determined by completion speed and number of enemies taken out, since some of them are hidden within a level. It's a game of simple pleasures and disfigured, colorful enemies that enjoy twerking around your corpse when given the chance. It's wacky and it's weird, but it's a lot of (challenging) fun, and I didn't want to put it down. You can decide what that says about me as a person.

From what we were able to play, everything in Anger Foot comes together pretty well. The demo showed off a boss fight and two different styles of "biomes" — a house and sewer section — with about five levels each. At this stage, there is no telling how many areas, bosses, or levels we can expect, or even if the game has a firm release date. Here's hoping that Anger Foot can expand upon and execute its ideas by the time it releases in 2023.